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Oops! Did Vice Just Give Away John McAfee’s Location With Photo Metadata?

John McAfee, the millionaire software executive turned semi-fugitive, was falsely reported captured over the weekend. Now, in a new post on his blog, he claims that he’s left Belize for another country in the company of two Vice journalists and his longtime female companion, Sam. He also noted that Vice would be publishing a story today that would end all the speculation as to whether or not he is a “drug-crazed madman.”

In fact, Vice did publish a story today, titled “We Are With John McAfee Right Now, Suckers,” complete with a photo of McAfee and Vice editor-in-chief Rocco Castoro taken with an iPhone 4S. And location information embedded in the photo indicates the foursome is in Guatemala, specifically along the Rio Dulce in the Parque Nacional Rio Dulce. Near the Ranchon Mary restaurant. By a swimming pool.

Many smartphones, the iPhone 4S included, automatically embed location data in photographs if that setting is turned on. Commonly, this information is either removed prior to publishing location sensitive stories, or turned off in the phone before pictures are taken.

After the story broke on Twitter, McAfee promptly put up a blog post noting that he had “manipulated the xif data on the image taken from my cellphone, and created a fake emrgency so that the urgency of movement led, as I knew it would, to the hasty posting on their website.” At about the same time, Vice posted a new version of the photo with the GPS coordinates removed.